


Complicated Love

by solversonlou



Category: Fargo (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-29 02:11:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11431002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solversonlou/pseuds/solversonlou
Summary: Meemo tries to figure out what it is that he and Yuri share.





	Complicated Love

Emmit is in pieces, sitting at his dining room table with his head in his hands.

 

Meemo and Yuri have been called over by Varga to escort out a protesting Sy, who Emmit had just yelled at and accused of being on Varga's side.

 

"Now, now, dear," Varga says, circling the table with one hand in his pocket. "I understand that you're upset over your beloved wife leaving you, but we have bigger things to concern ourselves with."

 

Emmit glances up from his hands, anger rising in his voice as he speaks. "I don't care about that! I've lost my family! I've lost everything!"

 

Sighing, Varga glances wordlessly towards Meemo and Yuri, who are idly stood by, watching in mild interest.  

 

Yuri takes it as a cue to step forward and put on his faux concern that's just straight up intimidation, clasping a firm hand on Emmit's shoulder, "You are very upset, my friend. Understandable. Love is terrible thing to lose."

 

The look of contorted discomfort that spreads across Emmit's face at the henchman's words and hand on his shoulder is almost immediate, "What the shit do you know about love?! You're a psychopath!"

 

Yuri's faux concern shifts into a blank look. He blinks at Emmit, hand still on his shoulder before glancing towards Meemo, who lifts his eyebrows and tilts his head to the side as if agreeing with Emmit's words.

 

"I had a wife," Yuri says, turning his attention back towards Emmit. "Very beautiful woman, but she passed under terrible circumstances. Only twenty two. Very devastating. Broke my heart. Perhaps that is why I am, like you say, a psychopath."

 

Yuri conveniently leaves out the part about how he'd murdered her.

 

Meemo hides a smirk behind his hand, looking down towards the ground as Emmit looks up at Yuri with a mixture of skepticism and slight sympathy, unsure if he should believe the imposing man.

 

"Come, you just need nap and some food," Yuri says, putting his arms around Emmit's shoulders as he pulls him up out of his seat. 

 

Although he stiffens under Yuri's grip, Emmit allows himself to be pulled away by him, too sad to care at this point. 

 

Meemo, stood with his hands in his pockets and earphones in, follows them both out of the room as Varga remains, shaking his head at Emmit's weakness.

 

\- - -

 

Despite his initial amusement at Yuri's response to Emmit, Meemo fixates on the words exchanged between the two of them for a while. 

 

Yuri's lips are on his neck, stubble scratching his throat as Meemo leans back against the pillows on the bottom bunk of the bed in the truck. 

 

He's already half-hard and craning into Yuri's palm, his own hand returning the favour to Yuri, who's got his tracksuit bottoms around his ankles and boxers halfway down his thighs.

 

Meemo cannot however concentrate, Emmit's words ringing in his head. He places a hand on Yuri's shoulder, exhaling a sigh as he pushes Yuri away from him.

 

Yuri blinks at him, brow furrowed. "What is problem?"

 

"Did you love her?" Meemo just comes out with it, not bothering to skate around his line of questioning. He never saw the point in daudling when it came to words. 

 

There's a pause, Yuri taking in the question. His frown deepens. "My hand is on your dick. Why ask me this now?"

 

"Emmit," Meemo says, pulling his hand away from the other man, who makes a noise of disgust in response.

 

"Why mention him? My erection is killed," Yuri complains, sitting up on the bed and tucking himself away. "You killed it."

 

"I'm being serious," Meemo frowns, voice monotonous and low as he zips up his jeans. "Your wife. Did you love her?"

 

Yuri still isn't sure why Meemo is asking him this. He doesn't often think about her, only when he's reminded of her like earlier today at Emmit's house. Shifting on the bed, Yuri furrows his brow in thought. "No... I don't think. We married because our families thought it would fix our feuding."

 

Meemo has only heard tidbits about Yuri's childhood. He was raised in an environment where fist fights were the norm, and a show of affection was a backhanded smack from his mother, who then proceeded to encourage him to hit her back.

 

Meemo's upbringing had been so distant and cold in comparison.

 

Glancing at Meemo, Yuri takes in the lines of his unchanging expression. 

 

If he wasn't standing with a smug smile on his face, dancing, or annoyed with Yuri for bothering him, Meemo was usually dead behind the eyes. 

 

For some reason, Yuri likes it. Meemo's ambivalence towards the world is something he seems to share, although in different quantities. He swallows, "Why do you ask?"

 

Meemo isn't even sure of that answer himself. He'd not really thought about what exactly the nature of his and Yuri's relationship had become at this point. At first they had just worked together, barely speaking unless absolutely necessary. Then they'd bickered and fought as a form of unconventional male bonding. Then it'd turned into angry kisses against the walls of the truck, and then Meemo pressing Yuri's face into the mattress of a motel bed, taking him until Yuri was groaning broken fragments of Russian and English into the sheets.

 

"I don't think I know what love is," Meemo says, and his words are so honest that it takes him himself aback. "I never loved my parents. When I killed them, I felt nothing."

 

Yuri recalls Meemo smiling when telling him about the fact that he'd killed his father and mother when he was only fifteen. Even to Yuri, whose first kill was Helga, he found that unbelievable. At fifteen, Yuri would fight other boys to the point of knocking them unconscious, but he'd never taken a life at that point, especially not a relative.

 

Feelings to Meemo are strange and fleeting things. There's the surface level feelings, adrenaline when he kills, something that had dampened with each passing kill but had reignited again since he met Yuri. There's his affection for jazz, for dancing. He feels a sense of smugness when he knows someone is getting screwed over, when they're intimidated by him, and by Yuri. 

 

It's as if he either feels too much or feels too little, and yet there's a sense of complexity to his feelings, like when he feels a hot flush of blood sweep across his cheeks when Yuri is too close to him, or when he doesn't know whether he wants to strangle Yuri or kiss him. 

 

He recalls a therapist, the one his parents had palmed him off to when he was causing trouble at school, stabbing kids with pencils. She was useless, telling him she had no idea what was wrong with him, that he was just fucked up. Like a robot that was learning how to feel, but all it could feel was destruction. He was so calm on the outside, and yet not calm at all. He was smug and self righteous, and yet dead behind the eyes. She couldn't figure him out. Nobody could.

 

"Love is not black and white, like stupid people think," Yuri shrugs, shoulder bumping against Meemo's as he reaches into his pocket for a cigarette. "Love is not like Notebook."

 

Meemo turns to look at Yuri, brow furrowed at his pop culture reference. Taking in the lines of Yuri's face as he lights his cigarette, Meemo's frown softens, "I don't even like people."

 

Yuri turns his head, cigarette hanging from his lips as he raises an eyebrow. His voice is still low, still monotonous, just like Meemo's. "People are too black and white. They have too many rules. They would say my mother didn't love me, but she did. They would say we are not friends, but we are."

 

He gestures between the two of them, pulling the lit cigarette from his lips as Meemo's gaze drag between his lips and his eyes. 

 

Meemo swallows, "I don't have friends."

 

"Well, what is this, then?" Yuri asks, exhaling smoke into the air between them. "We work together, yes, but we also talk. You like spending time with me, yes?"

 

Meemo doesn't know how to respond to how open Yuri is being. He has a way of doing that, being too honest and too straightforward. It's like he knows how to get under Meemo's skin. 

 

"Sometimes," Meemo says, throat dry at his own honesty, like it feels wrong somehow to admit this. "You're an asshole, but yes."

 

The grin that cracks across Yuri's face shouldn't get to Meemo, but it does. He shifts on the bed, turns his gaze away from Yuri, who takes another drag from his cigarette, "I like you."

 

"Shut up," Meemo says, tone an empty threat. He vaguely notices that Yuri is drawing closer, his cigarette dangling between his fingers. He should punch him in the back of the neck, but he doesn't.

 

"Do you think I would let another man do to me what you do?" Yuri's warm breath hits Meemo's cheek as he stubs his cigarette out on the rickety metal bedframe, letting it drop to the floor. 

 

Yuri's hand is on him again, cupping Meemo's still present arousal through his jeans as Meemo exhales, eyes sliding shut. Yuri's lips press against his cheekbone in a move that's far too affectionate, and Meemo wonders briefly if that's what people mean when they talk about love. He brushes the thought away, ignoring the way his chest feels at the idea. 

 

"I said shut up," is all he says, before turning to Yuri and pressing their mouths together.

 

\- - - 

 

Yuri brings back a book from the library.

 

Meemo comes back from Nikki's motel room shortly after Varga arrives back from Ray's.

 

"What is this?" Meemo asks, inspecting the book's cover and looking over its cartoon illustrations. "This is for children."

 

"Souvenir," Yuri shrugs, crossing the room towards Meemo as Varga moves towards the computer area. "Reminds me of childhood. I stole books from the store in town."

 

Meemo blinks at him as if he isn't so sure that Yuri can even read, even though he's seen him do so in the past. 

 

Yuri's fond smile as he looks over the cover stirs something inside of Meemo, who swallows and shifts his gaze back towards the book in his hands. 

 

Passing the book back to Yuri, Meemo clears his throat, "Well, enjoy your highbrow literature."

 

Yuri's still grinning as Meemo turns back towards their bunks, "You should read it. You might like it. Words are good. Better than your jazzy songs with no lyrics."

 

Meemo rolls his eyes.

 

\- - -

 

Varga brings in another guy: Golem, as he likes to be called.

 

Yuri and Meemo sit out in the van, watching the police station from afar. 

 

Varga is back at the truck, keeping an eye on the CCTV in case the poison plot goes wrong.

 

"The wolf head looks stupid," Meemo says, fingers flexing around the steering wheel.

 

Yuri leans over from the passenger seat slowly, tilts his head forward until the nose of the wolf hat touches Meemo's cheek.

 

Meemo frowns, turns his head towards Yuri, who uses the opportunity to press their mouths together in a chaste kiss.

 

Shoving him away, Meemo turns his head back towards the station, ignoring the way his cheeks burn hot at the affection. He wants Yuri to kiss him again, wants to pull out of this parking lot and find a motel room he can kiss him in and forget about the whole plan at hand. 

 

Instead, he shakes his head, "Such an asshole."

 

It's mere seconds later when Golem darts out of the station doors, signalling for them to unlock the car.

 

\- - -

 

The bus crash is an absolute shitshow.

 

Meemo pulls the goat head off of his face, meets Yuri's gaze in the dark of the road as the car of witnesses passes by them.

 

There's a brief moment where Meemo wants to say something, wants to stupidly tell Yuri to stay safe, as if that would help. 

 

Yuri wants to grab Meemo and kiss him before he disappears into the forest.

 

They don't do either of those things.

 

Meemo just makes his way back towards the van as Yuri watches him wordlessly, Golem waiting by with a bloody nose and waiting to take Yuri's lead into the forest.

 

\- - -

 

"Did they find anything?" Meemo asks, days later, when the police have cleared the crime scene.

 

"No," Varga says with a sigh. "You'd think they'd find something, but the forests around here are filled with heaven knows what. Wolves could have gotten to them both. Hypothermia. Who knows?"

 

Meemo feels sick at the thought of Yuri laying there, frostbitten and dead in the snow. 

 

He manages to remain stoic, pushing whatever he may be thinking or feeling regarding Yuri's disappearance down as he nods and asks Varga what the next line of action is.

 

\- - -

 

Sy is a nuisance they get rid of easily, Meemo spending Christmas at Emmit's house, dancing in his hallways. 

 

It's a distraction. He's convinced himself that Yuri will return, the Russian being far too hardy to succumb to someone as unskilled as Nikki Swango, or the cold of all things.

 

A Christmas movie blares on the TV as Meemo passes the lounge where Varga is sat, eating yet another plate of chicken. 

 

There's a generic Texan accent, professing her love for the protagonist, who tells her he loves her too.

 

It reminds Meemo of his conversation with Yuri, back after Emmit's wife had left him.

 

He frowns, shoves his earbuds back in his ears. 

 

Yuri will return. 

 

\- - -

 

He finds it tucked under what used to be Yuri's pillow.

 

The book, its blue hardcover and illustrations bringing Meemo back to that night Yuri had brought it back from the library. The night he'd disappeared.

 

Meemo's chest tightens at the sight of it, his exhale shaky as he flips open the cover and settles onto his bunk.

 

"You should read it," Yuri's words echo in his head.

 

He takes his advice, reading it slowly, fingers tracing the corners as if he can feel Yuri's own hands on the pages.

 

He thought he'd grown used to the idea of Yuri being gone. Months had passed after all, and it wasn't as if whatever they shared was anything serious. He wasn't some wanting waif, awaiting her lover's return from war.

 

Turning the pages, Meemo doesn't know why the words and images are turning blurry, not until tears begin to prick the back of his eyelids.

 

Slamming the book shut, Meemo inhales sharply, eyes screwed shut as he tries to remember where he is, who he is. He's not weak. Varga is sitting not too far from him, down the near the computers.

 

Meemo shoves the book under his pillow, presses the balls of his palms against his eyes and sighs. 

 

The heavy weight in his chest is crushing, bearing down on his rib cage and it's like time and time before again, when he feels too much after feeling too little.

 

He hates it. He hates that he'd just started to forget about Yuri, and now he was back because of a stupid fucking book.

 

The dreams had almost stopped. The dreams of Yuri's lips on his neck, of his grin and his calloused hands and his Russian jokes that were painfully bad but which Meemo had smirked at anyway. The dreams of Yuri's legs wrapped around his waist as Meemo took him in the very bunk he sleeps in. The dreams of that conversation about love playing over and over again.

 

_"Love is not black and white, like stupid people think."_

 

Meemo's starting to think that maybe he was right.

 

\- - -

 

He doesn't die quickly.

 

The bullets strike Meemo hard and fast, but he doesn't die quickly at all. 

 

It's not a bullet to the head, painless and unsuspecting. It's a bullet to his lungs that slowly fill up with blood as he struggles to breathe.

 

He can still see Varga's face, still feel the betrayal before those doors had closed on him.

 

There's the heavy footsteps of his killer behind him. 

 

They sound more distant as his breath grows shallower, burning hot pain ripping through him.

 

It's agonising, but it's probably what he deserves.

 

There's no point in fighting it now, eyes wide as he suffocates, panic subsiding a little as he realises that there's no surviving this. 

 

He thinks about Yuri, laying and bleeding out in the snow. He'd heard that hypothermia made you feel as if you were burning hot instead of cold. He wonders if what he's feeling is how Yuri had felt. He wonders if Yuri had thought of him.

 

Things are dulling now, slipping away.

 

Meemo doesn't believe in an afterlife.

 

But Meemo also hadn't believed that he could love.

 

He wonders if Yuri would find him there.

\- - -

His aching, bleeding feet drag themselves across the laminate floors, lit by the florescent lighting that he's grown to despise.

 

Stopping in his tracks, Yuri stands by one of the lanes, realisation dawning on him at the sight before him.

 

The Wandering Jew, a familiar sight. Yuri has been visiting him for god knows how long now. He's not sure if time even exists here.

 

It's the person he's speaking to which concerns Yuri. 

 

"A betrayal from Varga was not enough," The Wandering Jew says, loud enough for Yuri to hear, although he can often hear his voice in his head regardless. "Your punishment fit the crime."

 

"I was already riddled with bullets," Meemo practically growls in anger, wincing as he pulls the last of the hardened glue from his mouth, spitting it out on the bloody bar top. His fingers press to his throat, stemming the slow flow of blood that spills out of a gash there. "When will you let me fucking die?"

 

"You are dead," The Wandering Jew reminds him. "I'm just not letting you rest."

 

Yuri swallows, the hand gripping his own flayed and bleeding arm dropping to his side as he wonders briefly if this is real. To be fair, he hadn't been sure in any of it was real, or what this place even was.

 

"Ah," The Wandering Jew tips his glass up, signalling to behind Meemo. "Looks like your gift has arrived."

 

Meemo frowns, confused, and then he's turning on his bar stool. His face, stained with blood and glue, softens considerably as his eyes widen and he recognises the person before him.

 

The grin that cracks across Yuri's lips, split and bloody from the knives and fists of Helga's family, is a welcomed sight to Meemo, his own lips moving into a smile.

 

"Your suffering isn't over," The Wandering Jew informs him, taking a sip of his whiskey as Meemo rises to his feet, still fixated on the man stood across from him. "But I'm feeling generous. There's worser evils than you two after all."

 

Meemo's body aches with all of the pain that's been inflicted upon him, but he manages to drag himself towards Yuri, who meets him somewhere in the middle. 

 

Meemo's blood stained fingers brace themselves on Yuri's arm, pulling his body against him, Yuri's non-flayed arm wrapping around Meemo's shoulder in an embrace.

 

"Asshole," Meemo murmurs, lips chapped from glue moving against Yuri's shoulder. 

 

They'd never hugged before this, unless Yuri laying in the bottom bed with his head on Meemo's chest, listening to his heartbeat through his rib cage, surprised that the man had one at all had counted.

 

"Now," Yuri tuts, squeezing Meemo tighter against him, lips pressed to his temple as he closes his eyes, taking a moment to bask in the embrace. "Is that a way to speak to an old friend?"

 

Meemo's head moves against his shoulder, looks up at him with his eyes creasing at the corners, a smile playing upon his lips. Yuri looks like hell, but so does he. 

 

"Yes," Meemo says, breath coming out short as his rib cage aches from the punches and kicks that a woman resembling Nikki Swango had delivered to him what was maybe a couple of days before. Or weeks, perhaps? He inhales sharply, fingers curling into Yuri's jacket as his smile fades a little, eyes growing serious, voice low. "I thought you were dead."

 

"Well," Yuri blinks, his own grin fading as he recognises the shift in tone. It's not tense, it's just... there's so much that needs to be said. "I did. I am."

 

"I know," Meemo says, eyes shifting between his fingers clasping Yuri and back up to his face again. "I looked for you. I couldn't find you."

 

"That would probably be wolves," Yuri says, so matter-of-factly that it's kind of funny. "Or bear."

 

Yuri looks over the top of Meemo's head, towards the bar. The Wandering Jew is gone for now, but Yuri knows he'll return. He always does.

 

"Come," Yuri says, hands sliding to Meemo's shoulders. "Let us drink."

 

\- - -

 

"When Emmit's wife left him," Meemo says after his third drink. Alcohol doesn't do much here besides dull some of the pain, so he's still sober. "You told me that love was not black and white."

 

"Nothing ever is," Yuri says, gesturing with his hand to the space around them as he takes another sip of his vodka. When he meets Meemo's eye again, Meemo looks pensive, sad almost.

 

Yuri puts his glass down, brow furrowing as he takes in Meemo's face. He doesn't need to say anything. Yuri knows what he's trying to say.

 

Laying his hand out on the bar top, knuckles pressed against it with his palm exposed, Yuri smiles in a way that's far too gentle for a man with blood on his face for paying for his sins.

 

Meemo supposes that he himself is no different, his fingers moving to Yuri's palm, taking his hand in his own. 

 

There's the click of a record being loaded up into a jukebox, one that sits behind the bar where it hadn't been before. Chords begin to play out a 1940s love song. It sounds like Doris Day, but neither of them are sure.

 

Meemo leans across the space between him and Yuri, his fingers curling around the back of his neck.

 

Yuri meets him in the middle, hand squeezing Meemo's fingers as their lips press together.

 

They aren't sure how long they're there before The Wandering Jew returns. 

 

The song seems to be endless, their lips moving together, the taste of blood and glue disappearing until all they can taste and feel are each other.

 

"You can see each other again," he tells them, when they're pulling apart and glaring at him with mutual contempt. "I didn't think you two were capable, but it seems that love doesn't care about good or evil. Unfortunately for you, I do."

 

Yuri doesn't even care about Helga's people.

 

Meemo doesn't care about the glue or the shards of glass or the bullet holes piercing his skin.

 

"'till we meet again," Yuri says saluting with his fingers pressed to his temple, words matching the lyrics on the jukebox.

 

Meemo nods, not worrying about the glares he can feel on his back, from the men with shards of glass and the woman in the colourful jacket and with the brown bob. "I'll buy you a drink."

 


End file.
